I believe all of us tanks are familiar now with why Effective Health is important. But just to re-iterate, provided you are not neglecting other important stats (notably defense), you can never have “too much” health. This is especially true for raid tanks.

This is why I feel the need to bring your attention to this one time, once a year opportunity. Through October 4th, you can kill Coren Direbrew in the Grim Guzzler (that is the pub in Blackrock Depths) and get, not one, but two massive stamina trinkets. What is better, is that you can kill him multiple times in a row, once a day for each person in your party (which means you can kill him as many times in a day as you can find people who haven’t killed him yet). I should also mention he is a real pushover.

Let me say this again, you can get both the Bitter Balebrew Charm and the Bubbling Brightbrew Charm, for a whopping +340 Stamina. If you are like me and have terrible luck getting your hands on trinkets, this is your chance. And, if for any reason you happen to possess (or happen to know someone that possesses) a Direbrew’s Remote, you have absolutely no excuse not to get both of these before the holiday event ends. Well any excuse perhaps save that you have the Heart of Iron and Juggernaut’s Vitality already.

But really, then you would miss out on having your own Dwarvish Beer-maidens to give you beer anywhere in the world. Either way you shake it infinite beer on 10 minute cooldown or lots more health, it boils down to the obvious question:

I’m sure there is more. Effective Health (or EH, as the parlance goes) can be a good measure of what a tank can handle if it’s not stacked to the expense of everything else. Certainly it plays an important part in raid progression. One might even suspect that Blizzard plans encounters under the assumption that Health increasing buffs are in place, meaning that they assume that every raid has Greater Blessing of Kings, Gift of the Wild, and Prayer of Fortitude.

I think it’s reasonably certain that not all raids, particularly 10 man raids, have these buffs. And that is why I think tanks everywhere should cheer the addition of these items on the PTR:

Inscription

* Runescroll of Stamina – Snowfall Ink, Resilient Parchment x 5 – Increases Stamina by 165 for all party and raid members for 1 hr.

Leatherworking

* Drums of Forgotten Kings – Heavy Borean Leather x 8, Icy Dragonscale x 8 – Gives all members of the raid or group the Blessing of Forgotten Kings, increasing total stats by 8% for 30 min.
* Drums of the Wild – Heavy Borean Leather x 4, Jormungar Scale x 20 – Gives the Gift of the Wild to all party and raid members, increasing armor by 750, all attributes by 37 and all resistances by 54 for 1 hr

I know I’m going to be carrying these around with me in the future. It’s a habit I would recommend for just about everyone.